What Is in Your Wallet? Quantitation of Drugs of Abuse on Paper Currency with a Rapid LC-MS/MS Method

Laboratory experiments were developed to introduce students to the quantitation of drugs of abuse by high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Undergraduate students were introduced to internal standard quantitation and the LC-MS/MS method optimization for cocaine. Cocaine extracted from paper currency was analyzed with a simple and rapid LC-MS/MS method. Students in advanced laboratories determined the amount of amphetamine, methamphetamine, and oxycodone on currency in addition to cocaine. The LC-MS/MS method has a short run time (2.5 min) to allow for a high throughput of student samples.